Libro: In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching

This Nascent State edition is a faithful reprint of the 1931 publication (not a scanned facsimile). Great care has been taken to ensure nothing has been altered or omitted from the original. The book includes all the chapters, including the foreword, the diagrams, and index, and has been reformatted to make it clear and readable.

Peter Demianovich Ouspensky was born in Moscow in 1878. He began working life as a journalist, and by 1906 he had worked his way up to the editorial offices of the Moscow daily newspaper The Morning.

His interest in philosophy and higher mathematics led him to publish his first book, The Fourth Dimension, in 1909, which dealt with the nature of time. His first major work, Tertium Organum, was published in 1912. The title, meaning 'The third canon of thought', was a reference to Aristotle's Organon and Francis Bacon's Novum Organon, and indicated the seriousness of the undertaking.

In 1915 he met the enigmatic George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, and the direction of his life changed. Ouspensky then created a system from the fragments transmitted by Gurdjieff and began teaching it to those who attended his lectures in London in 1921. In Search of the Miraculous is a record of his meeting with, and eventual departure from Gurdjieff.